Human Services News

From The Commonwealth Fund:

In a Commonwealth Fund-supported study comparing preventable deaths in 19 industrialized countries, researchers found that the United States placed last.

While the other nations improved dramatically between the two study periods---1997-98 and 2002-03---the U.S. improved only slightly on the measure.

In addition to the U.S., the study included 14 Western European countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

According to the authors, if the U.S. had been able reduce amenable mortality to the average rate achieved by the three top-performing countries, there would have been 101,000 fewer deaths annually by the end of the study period.

The concept of amenable mortality was developed in the 1970s to assess the quality and performance of health systems and to track changes over time.

For this study, the researchers used data from the World Health Organization on deaths from conditions considered amenable to health care, such as treatable cancers, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

Between 1997-98 and 2002-03, amenable mortality fell by an average of 16 percent in all countries except the U.S., where the decline was only 4 percent.

In the leading countries, mortality rates per 100,000 people were 64.8 in France, 71.2 in Japan, and 71.3 in Australia.

The largest reductions in amenable mortality were seen in countries with the highest initial levels, including Portugal, Finland, Ireland, and the U.K, but also in some higher-performing countries, like Australia and Italy.

The rate of amenable mortality is a valuable indicator of health care performance, say the authors---one that can point to potential weaknesses in a nation's health system that require attention.

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